Snowden: NSA Spying On EU Diplomats and Administrators 417
An anonymous reader writes "According to a report dated 2010 recently provided by [former NSA contractor Edward] Snowden to the German news magazine 'Der Spiegel', the NSA has systematically been spying on institutions of the EU in Washington DC, New York, and Brussels. Methods of spying include bugging, phone taps, and network intrusions and surveillance according to the documents."
All part of a grand tradition.
Re:No subject (Score:5, Informative)
http://pastebin.com/NTJvUZdJ [pastebin.com]
Deleted Article by The Guardian
Original Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/29/european-private-data-america [guardian.co.uk]
Now redirecting to: http://www.guardian.co.uk/info/2013/jun/30/taken-down [guardian.co.uk]
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Revealed: secret European deals to hand over private data to America
Germany 'among countries offering intelligence' according to new claims by former US defence analyst
At least six European Union countries in addition to Britain have been colluding with the US over the mass harvesting of personal communications data,
according to a former contractor to America's National Security Agency, who said the public should not be "kept in the dark".
Wayne Madsen, a former US navy lieutenant who first worked for the NSA in 1985 and over the next 12 years held several sensitive positions within the
agency, names Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain and Italy as having secret deals with the US.
Madsen said the countries had "formal second and third party status" under signal intelligence (sigint) agreements that compels them to hand
over data, including mobile phone and internet information to the NSA if requested.
Under international intelligence agreements, confirmed by declassified documents, nations are categorised by the US according to their trust level. The US
is first party while the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand enjoy second party relationships. Germany and France have third party relationships.
In an interview published last night on the PrivacySurgeon.org blog, Madsen, who has been attacked for holding controversial views on espionage issues,
said he had decided to speak out after becoming concerned about the "half story" told by EU politicians regarding the extent of the NSA's
activities in Europe.
He said that under the agreements, which were drawn up after the second world war, the "NSA gets the lion's share" of the sigint
"take". In return, the third parties to the NSA agreements received "highly sanitised intelligence".
Madsen said he was alarmed at the "sanctimonious outcry" of political leaders who were "feigning shock" about the spying operations
while staying silent about their own arrangements with the US, and was particularly concerned that senior German politicians had accused the UK of spying
when their country had a similar third-party deal with the NSA.
Although the level of co-operation provided by other European countries to the NSA is not on the same scale as that provided by the UK, the allegations are
potentially embarrassing.
"I can't understand how Angela Merkel can keep a straight face, demanding assurances from [Barack] Obama and the UK while Germany has entered into
those exact relationships," Madsen said.
The Liberal Democrat MEP Baroness Ludford, a senior member of the European parliament's civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee, said
Madsen's allegations confirmed that the entire system for monitoring data intercept
That doesn't make it right (Score:2, Informative)
All part of a grand tradition.
That doesn't make it right.
Re:Russia? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think going to Russia was ever in his long term plan. He was clearly hoping Hong Kong would not extradite him. At some point he changed his mind about that. Russia was likely just part of some short term strategy to avoid spending the rest of his life in prison for doing a good deed. At this point however he may have no choice but to apply for political asylum in Mother Russia. It may not be a Libertarian Utopia. Certainly no more than the US. But it's a hell of a lot better than a US prison or gas chamber. Even North Korea would be better than that.
I probably would have flown to Laos. Not as modern as Hong Kong, but no extradition treaty with the US. It's cheap, and the people are some of the nicest in the world. It might be considered Communist, but it feels freer than the US because no one really bothers you. On paper you're not at all free, but in practice you are often more free than in the US. But I guess Russia isn't so bad.
Re:The US is nobody's friend (Score:4, Informative)
The only reasonable explanation for someone believing that the US resembles the USSR is nearly total ignorance of Soviet history.
The Soviet Story (2008) [youtube.com]
A Portrait of Stalin: Secret Police [youtube.com]
Katyn massacre [youtube.com]
Re:Of course they are... (Score:4, Informative)
I really don't think Finland is spying on the congress.. unless you count reading newspapers as spying - which you very well might.
but now - if their hacking gets caught red handed it's extradition requests time!
(EU doesn't have a NSA equivalent no matter how much you fantasize about james bond, no central CIA either, because many countries don't want to deal with the political and moral problems of assassinating people, because that's not how we roll and you better hope we never start to roll that way)
Re:No subject (Score:5, Informative)
Well... It's not that Guantanamo is against international law, it's the things that happen there that are against international law.
- Detaining people under the age of 18.
- Torture.
- Not following Article 5 of the Geneva convention. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combatant_Status_Review_Tribunal [wikipedia.org]
- Keeping people detained indefinitely without a trial. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civil_and_Political_Rights [wikipedia.org] requires "rights to due process and a fair trial"
For some more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp#International_law [wikipedia.org]
Re:Google were telling the truth (Score:4, Informative)
Have you missed the Washington Post PRISM 2 leaks just released?: http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/inner-workings-of-a-top-secret-spy-program/282/ [washingtonpost.com]
It proves what Google and Facebook said all along.
When Google Microsoft and Facebook deny they gave *direct* access to the NSA, they were telling the truth. They gave direct access to the *FBI* who gave direct access to the NSA! See! Not a lie!
That's not what Google said. Google said [blogspot.com] "First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centers."
Note that the statement was not limited to NSA spying.
That WP graphic you linked isn't inconsistent with Google's statements, though. The graphic implies, but does not state, that the data for the "tasking" is automatically extracted and returned to the FBI without any involvement by the company. If instead you assume that the tasking merely results in the delivery of a properly-formatted request to the company, then it fits. Google's statement does say that Google provides data to the company after its legal team reviews the request, and the Google Transparency report shows that Google does provide at least some data for 70% of requests. If we assume the legal staff reviews requests, pushing back on overly broad or otherwise inappropriate requests, then directs the collection of the data and sends it to the FBI, that process would match what's described, with the key addition of a human review process.
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, though I don't know anything about any of this stuff. I do, however, have pretty good reason to believe that Google is being truthful, mostly because Google's statements fit the company's culture and approach, and the theories about direct access or backdoors do not, and because I think this kind of program would be very hard to hide from Googlers... and I think the aforementioned culture would make it impossible to suppress if it were discovered.)
Re:For the sake of saving time, (Score:5, Informative)
As opposed to the USA where you can be *legally* stopped and searched for no reason at all within 100km of the border.... a large % of the US population lives within 100km of a border.
What we found is that fully TWO-THIRDS of the United States’ population lives within this Constitution-free or Constitution-lite Zone. That’s 197.4 million people who live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders.
Nine of the top 10 largest metropolitan areas as determined by the 2000 census, fall within the Constitution-free Zone.
Re:For the sake of saving time, (Score:2, Informative)
Forgot link: http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/fact-sheet-us-constitution-free-zone [aclu.org]
Re:For the sake of saving time, (Score:5, Informative)
So, I'm curious - what do you think we did to piss the Japanese off in 1941?
Or the Germans, for that matter?
Do keep in mind that they declared war on us, not the other way around?
Are you for real? in 1941 you froze Japanese assets in the US and put an embargo on US oil exports to Japan - when Japan was completely reliant on US oil (> 80% of their consumption).
You also used the US navy to escort your allies' (who were engaged in war with Germany) convoys that were carrying war materials to Great Britain and the USSR with explicit orders to treat any German ships as hostile. This lead to skirmishes with German U-boats and to German merchant ships being seized by the US navy - all the while you were still pretending not to be at war with Germany.
The reasons for these acts were attacks against your allies (Japanese occupation of French Indochina, German threat to Britain), no threat to the US itself. It's of course nice if you want to help out your allies but helping out your allies in their wars while pretending to be a neutral party in said wars does simply not work out. I don't see how you can in that situation complain that they made a war official that you had already been waging for several months.
It would be just as absurd as today's US complaining about a declaration of war by Iran, labeling them as the aggressor while ignoring any economic sanctions, assassinations of nuclear scientists, stuxnet, ...
Re:Russia? (Score:4, Informative)
First, we kind of expect the US to behave better than China, otherwise this fuss would not have happened.
Secondly, no, HK is not China, little more than it was previously England.
Among other things, Hong Kong has its own hard currency, laws, passports, government, judicial independence, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.
These freedoms are not merely theoretical, but frequently exercised in a way that may indeed have people sent off for reeducation if done in mainland China.
Beijing may well have forced HK to warn Snowden out, but that's better than the pressure that would have come from Washington on many other countries.